Personal television (PTV) services enable viewers to view programs at anytime, independent of when the broadcasters choose to show them. This is typically accomplished by providing viewers with Personal TV Recorders which are essentially set top boxes equipped with hard-drives. The PTV service is loaded on the hard-drives, thus, enabling the set top boxes to selectively record and playback live television broadcasts. Many of these PTV services include program recommenders which recommend television shows based on the viewer's personal TV viewing profile.
The TV viewing profiles are currently derived using three basic methods: implicit profiling; explicit profiling; and feedback profiling. Implicit profiling methods derive TV viewing profiles unobtrusively from the viewer's television viewing histories, i.e., sets of TV shows watched and not watched. Explicit profiling methods derive TV viewing profiles from viewer answered questionnaires that include explicit questions about what the viewer likes and dislikes. Feedback profiling methods derive TV viewing profiles from sets of TV shows for which a viewer has provided ratings of the degree of like or dislike.
However, conventional TV recommenders do not permit viewers to correct errors in previously derived profiles. Accordingly, a method is needed which permits viewers to correct possible errors in previously derived TV recommender preference profiles.